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 Printable Lesson Plans Genki English CDs:  Volume 1  Volume 2  Volume 3  Volume 4  Volume 5  Volume 6   New CD Vol. 7   MP3 Songs |
Take any problem in the World and it's invariably caused ( or made worse)
by a lack of education. Too many kids hate school because it's too boring.
The aim of Genki Learning is to have all subjects in all countries taught
in a fun, engaging and effective way. There are already a few million kids
benefiting from this, and even a whole country where the government has
put it in all their schools. But there's still a long way to go!
While I'm on the road you'll hear about my travels & workshops, and
when I'm doing studio work I'll keep you up to date with ideas, updates
to the site and some of my favourite teaching resources. So if you want
to find out what's it's like behind the scenes or how & why I do what
I do or even if you're just nosey or a bit bored, have a read.
I'll update the diary as often as I can, so keep coming back. And of course
whilst I'm away, the office staff are always ready to send off your CD orders just as soon as you send them in!
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Quite a few of the teachers last week also taught Business English. A lot of Genki English style games are actually used by businesses in in-house training ( I learnt a few good ideas on the course I did at Arthur Andersen). At the end of last week’s workshop teachers were saying “Well, yes it does look like only kids could do this. But then again we were all sceptical adults only a couple of hours ago and now look at us!”
From about 13 years old kids go into the funny Harry Potter Effect stage, but the day they turn 20 everybody goes back to being a kid, and basically stays that way till they are 90 or even above. So my tip of the day is to try your favourite Genki stuff in your adult classes, you might just be surprised!
With all the games on the site, one question that often crops up is “Do I really have to do a different game each lesson?”. The easy answer is, of course, “no, not at all”.
Whilst the English content of the lessons should always be on an upward spiral ( there’s not point just doing “fruits” for 3 lessons), if the kids are still into using the same game but using today’s new English, then by all means save the time that explaining a new game would take and use the same idea again.
But of course don’t play a game to death. The trick with a good game is the same as a good TV show or movie franchise, cut it off at the peak. That way the kids will all be asking for it and will love when you bring it back for a review lesson, but do we really need a 6th series of “24″?
If you want to learn a bit of Korean, be sure to check out the upcoming Genki Korean site. As you’ll see it’s not finished yet, but there are a few nice little games on there including a talking alphabet page and some very nice numbers games. It’s quite fun to play and it really does work.
I’ve been working on the site for quite a while now and have got all the Korean recordings done this month, basically because I wanted to learn Korean myself and figured I might as well put my money where my mouth is and use a Genki way to learn it!
If enough people use the site hopefully I’ll be able to keep it free, so please tell everyone about the new online way to learn Korean: GenkiKorean.com! Lots more games coming soon…
Reader BBB put a comment on the forum the other day about the “Japanese stick” idea I mentioned in the last post. . The comment being that it’s not a good idea to use in places like Okinawa where the Japanese authorities used to use a similar technique to shame people for using their native language in real life!
It just goes to illustrate that any “punishment” type idea will always have some form of negative consequences.
But one other idea that can work in a very positive way is curiosity. Simply bring along a prop, doll or toy and sit it at the front of the class. Then ignore it! The kids will be totally curious near the end of the lesson and dying to know what it is. Even if you don’t use it in that lesson, as long as you occasionally do use the curiosity object, it will have a great effect. Plus if you tie in using the prop with a well behaved lesson it’s great positive reinforcement!
One big difference between workshops in Europe and Asia is that in Europe there are often more requests for “keeping the kids under control” type ideas.
Once you get the warm up right most kids keep under control for a period of at least a year, but of course you need to keep coming up with new techniques. On Saturday the teachers came up with quite a few suggestions themselves. e.g.
Giving the kids marbles or counters and taking them off them as they misbehave. ( small groups )
Getting sugar high kids to be your assistant. ( big groups )
Having a “naughty chair”. ( It seems like you can get a lot of ideas from Jo Frosts’ Supernanny.)
In Japan last year there was the idea of having a “Japanese stick”. If anyone uses Japanese when they shouldn’t they get given the Japanese stick. They can only get rid of it by passing it to someone else who speaks Japanese! Of course you can adapt this for any other country you happen to be teaching in.
As with any of these ideas it’s very much a “choosing the right tool for the job” exercise as nothing ever works 100%. And at the end of the day, rather than spending your time trying to keep up with bad behaviour, it’s nearly always much more worthwhile to invest time in finding exciting and interesting lesson ideas that will get the kids so involved they won’t have time to play up!
Now I’ve done quite a lot of international workshops it’s a lot less stressful not having to worry about what things to present and what things will go down well. As long as I start slow, take plenty of questions and do lots of the songs & games pretty much everything seems to work great!
Today’s group of teachers were from the ELTA-Rhine group and were fantastic. In the first few minutes we had quite a few “Oh my goodness, what on Earth is this?” type of expressions on people’s faces as they realised how much moving up and down there would be, but by the end of it I could move back and just left everyone to get on with things as they were indeed nicely genkified!
Last year near Hamburg was also great, and one of the teachers today came all the way from Frankfurt. Next year it would be very nice to do a tour of all of Germany! The teachers are great, the materials work so well and there are so many great cities to visit here. If anyone could help set some workshops up I’d love to hear from you!
Content wise it was a basic 3 hour introduction, mainly based on the “What would you like to see today?” question posed in the string game. Then we went into What’s your name? ( I would have loved to do the Genki German version, but English was the request of the day!). Then How are you? and How are you Monster game?. Do you have any pets? came up to show how to introduce new language in a game form ( this time sticky fingers), rather than having to pre-teach it. Then the Balloon game in the alphabet race version and shiritori versions.
After the break we had a request for the Good Morning song, then Left & Right and Thank you song to finish with.
We covered most of the Online Workshop Videos, but as is often the case in Europe the teachers were not only wanting activities but were also asking lots of great questions.
Overall though it was a great day. I’m really happy that Genki English works so well in Europe, both with the language content and the activities, and the songs seem so universal. There are quite a few teaching systems around over here, but Genki English is pretty different to say the least! A lot of the teachers were also pleasantly surprised that I haven’t done it as a “you can only use this if you pay a huge monthly fee” system. All you need is the CD 6 pack and a little enthusiasm and off you go! This may be a little stupid on my part, but getting the word out there is the main thing I want to achieve.
And thank you everyone so much for today. You were a great group and you made me feel very welcome. Email me anytime you have any questions or have things I can help with. And if anyone else in Germany, Europe, or anywhere else in the World for that matter, can get a group of teachers together for a workshop you won’t regret it! Just drop me a line and we’ll work something out.
PS. All the lesson plans are online, but if you want something to print out and read, have a look at the booklet I did for the Hamburg workshop last year!
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